Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (81 page)

 
          
Finally,
even after all their aggressive maneuvering, there was no place for them to
hide. Northeast of the city of
Jingdezhen
were ten small- to medium-size mining
towns; to the west was the
Poyang
Lake
flood-plain, along with a Chinese fighter
base at Anqing, just fifty miles to the northwest. “Crew, I’m going to take us
between two of those mining towns to the north,” Patrick McLanahan said. “We
can’t go any farther west. High terrain is east and northeast; min safe
altitude is five thousand feet on this leg, then six thousand one hundred on
the next leg. We’re five minutes to the release point. I’m setting
five-hundred-foot clearance plane for this leg so we don’t balloon over these
upcoming ridges.”

 
          
It
was a good plan of action, but the odds were turning against them.

 
          
As
soon as the Megafortress climbed to establish the new clearance plane settings,
a large S symbol appeared on Luger’s threat display, which immediately went
from blue to yellow and then briefly to red. Luger activated the Megafortress’s
trackbreakers, designed to “walk” a targettracking or height-finder radar away
from a solid lock with the bomber, but not before the radar got a good two- or
three-second track on the bomber. “Search radar,
eleven o’clock
, momentary height-finder lock- on—ah, shit,
that’s why, they got a repeater radar off at
one o’clock
, up on a mountain peak,” Luger shouted. “I
think they got us. Trackbreakers are active. They’ll keep the height-finder
shut down, but we can expect company. ”

 
          
“Looks
like we might have to attack a target of opportunity here,” McLanahan said. He
quickly expanded his God’s-eye picture on his supercockpit display, then
touched the icon for the Anqing fighter base. Anqing North was a small but
active airfield that sat almost directly on a marshy tributary of the
Chang Jiang
River
and right at the base of a 2,500-foot peak.
The base had two medium-length runways, forming a T, and was laid out in
typical fashion: the main base was located on the west, the housing area to the
south, and the flight operations area to the northeast. McLanahan zoomed into
the flight operations area of the base, which automatically called up recent
NIRTSat photoradar satellite reconnaissance data from the EB-52’s downloaded
satellite data memory banks.

 
          
Although
the raw reconnaissance images did not identify each particular building, Patrick
McLanahan knew enough about the layout of a military air base to identify what
he needed to know: the mass aircraft parking area, where over fifty J-6, J-7,
and J-8 fighters were parked and fueled in preparation for a mission, was
concentrated in one spot, in front of a very large building in the
north-central portion of the flight operations sector of the base; and the big
building housed the fighter wing headquarters, flying squadron headquarters,
and the wing command post and communication center. McLanahan immediately
programmed one Striker missile for the center of the mass parking ramp, and one
missile for the center of the headquarters building.

 
          
“Stand
by for pylon Striker launch, crew,” he called out. He hit the voice-command
switch: “Launch one pylon Striker missile on new target zulu.”

 
          
WARNING,
STRIKER LAUNCH COMMIT ORDER.

 
          
“Commit
Striker launch,” McLanahan repeated.

 
          
WARNING,
STRIKER missile launch, the attack computer responded, and the Striker missile
in the left-wing weapons pod ignited its first-stage rocket motor and blasted
skyward. It unfolded its large fins seconds after launch, reaching 10,000 feet
in just a few seconds. It glided efficiently for about fifteen miles, dropping
down to about 6,000 feet, before firing its second-stage rocket motor and
climbing back up to 15,000 feet, when it began its powered ballistic dive onto
its target. “Second Striker pylon missile launch coming up, crew,” McLanahan
said. “Pilot, give me a slight climb up to six thousand feet so we can get a
good datalink signal.”

 
          
The
first Striker missiles terminal guidance sensor activated just eleven seconds
prior to impact, and McLanahan switched to low-light TV mode. It showed the
lights of the city of
Anqing
to the south and the smaller blotches of light a few miles north. As
the missile closed in, McLanahan could start to make out the air base
itself—the missile was guiding in perfectly. He could then see sparkles of
light around the base—antiaircraft artillery fire. The missile continued its
deadly plunge. McLanahan s fingers nestled on the steering-control trackball,
but he never had to touch it—because the Striker missile plowed directly on
target, right in the middle of the parking ramp. He could barely make out the
outlines of a half-dozen blunt-nosed jets and a fuel truck just seconds before
the 2,000 pound high-explosive missile hit. McLanahan switched to the second
Striker missile just as its terminal guidance sensor activated. Good, the
second missile appeared to be going right on target.

 
          
“Baudits, close in,
nine o'clock
!”
Luger shouted. At the same instant, a loud,
fast-pitched
deedledeedledeedle
tone
and a verbal “MISSILE LAUNCH! ” warning sounded in their headsets.
“Break left!”
A Chinese Sukhoi-27
fighter leading a flight of two J-8 fighters had used the information from
Anqing’s brief search radar lock on the EB-52 Megafortress to guide themselves
within range of its Infrared Search and Track sensor, so it could close within
missile range without using its attack radar— only the Megafortress’s passive
infrared threat warning system had seen them coming. The Chinese fighters
launched their heat-seeking missiles at optimum range, less than four miles
away.

 
          
Brad
Elliott yanked the Megafortresss control stick hard left until the bomber rolled
right into a full ninety-degree bank, then he pulled until he heard fibersteel
screeching in protest. Luger was pumping decoys and flares out the right-side
ejectors. Elliott ignored the stall warning horn, ignored Nancy Cheshire’s
screams that they were going to stall, ignored the initial buffet, the point at
which disturbed airflow over the wings starts pounding on the trailing edges of
the wings.

 
          
The
Megafortress could lose 300 knots of airspeed and be for all intents out of
control—but Elliott knew, from over ten years’ experience in this creation of
his, exactly what the point of no return was. It was the departure break, the
point at which the turbulent airflow over the wing that was causing all the
pounding and shaking suddenly starts to break free of the wing completely, and
lift rapidly bleeds off. The Megafortress’s crew were crushed down into their
ejection seats as Elliott pulled to tighten the turn, but seconds later they
felt light in their seats as the bomber started to drop out from under them.
The Megafortress would stop flying in less than two seconds—time to roll wings
level. At that point, the Megafortress was turning at four Gs, sixty degrees
per second,
as fast as or even faster
than the Chinese fighters could ever turn. The Megafortress flew out of the
lethal cone of five PL-2 missiles . . .

 
          
.
. . but not away from the sixth deadly missile. One of the six Pen Lung-2
missiles was fooled by the hot, noisy decoy gliders, missed by several dozen
yards, and exploded as its fuzing timer battery ran out—but the fast-turning
EB-52 flew right into the exploding missile’s lethal radius. Its shaped-charge
high-explosive warhead blew a continuous rod of steel into the left rear side
of the cockpit, decompressing the cabin and hitting Dave Luger with small
pieces of shrapnel and fibersteel.

 
          
The
cabin was already partially depressurized, but the sudden breach of the cabin
seemed to have sucked the air out of every one of the crew members. But Dave
Luger still found enough air in his lungs to scream aloud.
“Shit!”
he swore, holding his head with his left hand. A piece of
shrapnel had ripped through the bulkhead and ricocheted off his instrument
console before cutting painfully into his left thigh and left fore-arm and
pinging off his helmet near his left temple. Luger looked down in surprise at
the dark bloody gashes that had appeared as suddenly as a stroke of lightning.
He felt no pain—yet. It was almost humorous for him to think that he had just
been injured—again—flying a Megafortress mission. “Cripes, Muck,” he said to
McLanahan, as his partner turned to him in horror. “I think I just got nailed
again.”

 
          
McLanahan
was out of his seat in a second, leaving the second Striker missile on its own.
The second Striker, with no guidance inputs, relied solely on its own GPS
satellite updates and its onboard nav computers and flew itself to its
preprogrammed target coordinates, hitting sixty-eight feet north of the center
of the Anqing fighter base’s headquarters building. The 2,000-pound high-explosive
missile leveled half of the three- story concrete building in a blinding flash
of fire and a powerful earth-shattering blast.

 
          
“This
is bull, Muck,” Luger was saying. “How come I always get injured on one of
these things? When is it going to be your turn? I always ...” But then he
looked down and saw that three long, angry red rips like huge tiger’s claws
arced across McLanahan’s left shoulder and side across his back. “Jeez, Muck,
you got hit too, dammit.” A surge of energy coursed through Luger, and he
helped his longtime friend and partner back into his own seat and helped him
strap back in. McLanahan was already looking woozy, and Luger helped him
reattach his oxygen mask, secured up to his face, and made sure he was on
100-percent oxygen.

 
          
“Stay
with me, Patrick,” Luger said, cross-cockpit. McLanahan nodded wearily, as
Luger strapped himself back in and made sure his oxygen was on and 100 percent
too.

 
          
“Where
are the fighters, guys?” Nancy Cheshire shouted on interphone. The Megafortress
was still mushy, right at the edge of the stall. Elliott and
Cheshire
could do nothing but keep the wings level,
the nose below the horizon, and wait for the airspeed to come back—they hoped
that would happen before they ran out of altitude.
Cheshire
shouted, “How are we on the cumulogranite,
Muck?” No immediately reply. “You guys okay back there?”

 
          
“We’re
both hit, dammit,” Luger responded.

 
          
“What?”
Both Elliott and
Cheshire
snapped their heads around to look. “You
guys okay?”

 
          
“Clear
of terrain ahead, head westbound only—very high terrain north, south, and
east,” McLanahan shouted by way of response, his voice strained. “You’re
cleared down to three thousand feet in this area if you need it. When you can,
give me a heading of three-four-zero. We’re okay.”

 
          
“Turns
are a no-no right now,”
Cheshire
said. “They don’t sound very good. I’ll go check them over. You got it,
General?”

 
          
“I
got the plane, Nance,” Elliott acknowledged. They transferred controls with a
positive shake of the control stick.
Cheshire
stepped out of her seat and crawled under
the aft instrument console to check on both navigators.

 
          
“You’re
both bleeding like stuck pigs,”
Cheshire
said as she examined their wounds. She
looked across and saw small, jagged shrapnel holes in the fuselage. “Pilot,
better check the instruments—we might have taken some damage.”

 
          
“I
got my hands full as it is, co,” Elliott said.

 
          
“Dave
took a crack in his head and a couple in the leg and arm,”
Cheshire
reported on interphone. “Muck got a bunch
in the back, left side, and left shoulder. You guys are going to have some cool
scars to show your grandkids. Your seat-attachment shoulder harness is cut,
Patrick— if we get in trouble, and if you get the time, think about using one
of the downward-ejecting seats.”